Carney hears health care concerns in Canton

Published: November 25, 2009

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Photo: N/A, License: N/A, Created: 2009:11:24 16:45:54

Review Photo/ERIC HRIN During his Town Hall meeting in Canton Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Chris Carney talks with Carol Cole of Canton.

Photo: N/A, License: N/A, Created: 2009:11:24 16:24:50

Review Photo/ERIC HRIN Joe Dupont of Towanda carries a protest sign outside U.S. Rep. Chris Carney's Town Hall meeting in Canton Tuesday.

BY ERIC HRIN

CANTON - U.S. Rep. Chris Carney told about 30 people at his Town Hall meeting in Canton Tuesday afternoon that inaction is not acceptable when it comes to the issue of healthcare reform.

"We can't do nothing," he said during the meeting at the Rialto Theatre. "Doing nothing new is not an option."

During the meeting, Carney (D-Dimock Twp.) saw opposite viewpoints on the hot-button issue. He noted that people calling his office were in favor 2-1 of some kind of reform.

At the beginning of the meeting, he acknowledged how the issue of healthcare was presumably on everyone's minds.

Carney voted for recent health care legislation supported by the Obama administration.

He said that he was undecided going in, but there were some things that "tipped me to a yes."

He likes that it explicitly prohibits public funding for abortion, due to the Stupak Amendment. "I pledged that I couldn't support a bill that allowed federal dollars to be used for abortions…" he said. Also appealing to him was its benefit to people in rural, medically underserved areas. "What the bill did was create more resources to attract more doctors, more nurses, and more technicians of various kinds to come and practice here and live in our communities, and it also provided more for the building of medical colleges," he said.

Carol Cole of Canton told Carney, "one of the things that I am really concerned about is socialism in the United States, and while I really think it would be good for all of us to have medical care, I don't really want to see socialized medicine…" She stated that she was afraid it would "open the door" for other kinds of socialism.

"We don't need elected officials to decide what kind of medical care we are going to get, and when we're going to get it, and how much we can have…"

One man, Joe Dupont of Towanda, carried a protest sign outside with the message "Carney Care: Healthcare at Gunpoint." During the meeting, he told Carney, "you sold us out."

Some residents, including Deb Macnamara of Sheshequin Township and Jerry Hawthorne, meanwhile, thanked Carney for his vote.

Eric Hrin can be reached at (570) 297-5251; e-mail: reviewtroy@thedailyreview.com.

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13 posted comments

Joe, By virtue of his military service, Chris Carney is in a better position than almost any other legislator to make sensible decisions about our armed forces. He is one of them and he speaks for them. Contrast Dick Cheney, who evaded the draft five times then sent thousands of our soldiers to die in an economic war. I don't care how many enemy soldiers Carney kills or from where he kills them. I don't care about collateral casualties. If you're going to live in a war zone, you're going to risk death. When the people of Afghanistan stop supporting the terrorists, the drone attacks will stop because there will be nobody left to kill. With regard to tort reform, it is a minuscule piece of a very large pie, probably worth less than a tenth of a percent of the total picture. Really it's not worth his time to even comment on it.
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bigger picture,  11/28/09 9:25
and a net,
you obviously don't care about what Congressman Carney has to say.
He was bad mouthing tort reform, totally ignoring that Texas created Tort reform to bring more doctors into Texas. Carney was talking about trying to get more doctors into PA. Tort reform did not cost the tax payers anything. But it brought more doctors into Texas. In Canada they have a lottery so that a few people might get to see a doctor. So is Carney a brave man for pushing a button 1/2 way around the world to kill someone that may or may not be a bad guy? Do we get to see the reports as to who he killed? Do you think it is smart to have the miltary and elected government as on unit?
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joe dupont,  11/27/09 8:26
During Congressman Chris Carney's visit to the Rialto Theater in Canton he also out right criticized President Hamid Karzai who is trying to deal with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
How is such talk making the situation anything but "less stable".
It is easy for Carney to criticize President Karzai who faces death every day while Carney flies remote control Predator type aircraft in the safety of our borders. Why Carney boasts about his "kills" and insults the man who we need to stabilize Afghanistan, in pubic, demonstrates a lack of maturity. Telling our enemy that their people have been killed by a member of Congress not only puts all members of congress at risk by Cells in this country, but it endangers the people who live and work near their offices and the people where they speak.
No John Q Public needed to know about his "Kills". It was obviously meant to project himself as some kind of macho guy for self serving political reasons. The problem is that unlike the pilots who personally take the fight to the enemy and risk
life in limb in the realities of flying high performance aircraft and to enemy ground defenses,
Rep. Carney did his "kills" from an "office chair". What foreign leader would totally confide in Congressman Carney after he betrayed President Hamid Karzai's trust?
Some people are worried the separation between church and state. I worry more about the separation between government and the military. Members of congress should
not be in both! Rep. Carney should quite one of them.
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Joe DuPont,  11/26/09 10:16
'Fix welfare', Like yourself, I have tried to better my position. I have earned a second Masters degree at a top school. Too bad I cannot move to a better job. There is no place for advancement with my current employer, and I cannot change employers because I would lose my health insurance. You see, I have the dreaded "preexisting condition" and no new employer is going to consent to insure me. That's just another way our current health care system hurts our economy - through loss of job mobility.
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no name allowed by employer, Joe,  11/26/09 9:02
You know, I find it interesting that those who hid behind pen names are so smug in their comments. Yet others are not afraid to say
who they are because its in their character. Those who sign their real names are willing to be scrutinized. Those who hide leave us with no way to determine what their game is. .. who they represent.
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Joe DuPont,  11/26/09 12:29
How can we prosper when we are dumping a bunch of money into what if's? We can get the program to that but it will take making people work minium wage jobs and getting rid of the illegal immigrants that take those jobs because people would rather be to lazy and sit at home collecting those fat welfare checks! Over the last 5 years I've done nothing but improve my position in life going from one good job to a better job til I got to where I am now at P&G. If I've been able to go from minium wage to a top paying job over the course of 4 to 5 years in bad times why can't anyone else? It is the lack of desire by them to better themselve because they have the government to hand them money that is why!
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Fix welfare, make adjustments to health care,  11/25/09 8:06
Mr. Lawson, I would expect that any politician would consider an endorsement by you to be the kiss of death. Kind of like getting the support of Dick Cheney on the national stage. Who on earth would want it?
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gave me a chuckle,  11/25/09 12:39
Joe DuPont! You were one man who spoke for thousands. Way to go my friend.
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Joe Doherty,  11/25/09 11:44
I think everyone in the United States wants to fix the (real) problems with health care, tort reform, bad doctors, costs, portability, interstate competition, etc. What we don’t want is the entire health care system totally destroyed so it can be resurrected in the image of Karl Marx and bankrupt the country while doing so. Chris Carney is totally wrong about the benefits of this legislation. It will cause the loss of an additional 3.9 million jobs and only create government jobs, something we really don’t need. China now owns the United States and we’re becoming a third world country, something the Marxists of the world have wished for, for a very long time. Carney is not a blue dog and he’ll never get my vote.
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Victor Lawson,  11/25/09 10:37
The only thing surprising to me in this article is the statement that people calling his office were two to one in favor of reform. I would have guessed it ran five or six to one. I've heard a lot of rhetoric and read a lot of postings on this website, and I have yet to hear one good argument against health care reform. From the absurdity of Joe Dupont to the people crying socialism when they obviously don't have a clue what the word means, all I hear is garbage. Our economy cannot survive if we do not reform health care. It probably cannot ever prosper again even once we fix the health care problem. Are all the negative voices on this issue so financially secure that they don't have a concern about our economic future?
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it just baffles me,  11/25/09 8:48
Under President Clinton there was a great push for "welfare to work", where people would have their welfare run out if they were not trying to find work, training for work, or working at least part time. It was the only time in my memory that welfare wasn't a program you could stay on for life, making no effort to get off it. I don't know what happened to that mind-set. Now with the unemployment levels being what they are, I don't know how you could make such a program work. Obama needs to look at programs like the CCC and WPA and consider some "make work" programs to get people working, evan at minimum wage, doing public works projects. Carney is correct in his basic assumption. We can't just do nothing, as the health care system is killing us and will continue to do so until some sort of fix is done.
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Algernon,  11/25/09 8:19
To fix welfare, your right. Look at all the other government run programs social security, medicare and medicade. They can't even run the post office. How the h___ do you think they can run our health care? Since when are the politicians becoming doctors? We have to many problems with them being lawyers!! Let them take the same plans that they are FORCING us to take. NO WAY!! They have the best care in this country. GIVE THAT UP CARNEY, AND I WILL TAKE THE SAME PLAN AS YOU HAVE!!
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John Lukach,  11/25/09 8:11
If they want reform then why don't they look into making changes to the welfare system!!! That is a system that is in desperate need of change!! It to started out for the better of people now you have people abusing this system! And I fear that we will end up with a dysfunctional system with this health care reform. If they want to reform it then why don't they pass legislation to force the health care to accept people with pre-existing conditions rather than comepletely remake the system or try to run it? Wouldn't this make more sense?
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Fix welfare, make adjustments to health care,  11/25/09 5:31